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See what's includedMarketing departments are bursting at the seams with opportunity. Upstream they are in overdrive producing content for niche targets, using multiple agency partners and designers. Downstream, content needs to be seamlessly distributed across a range of social, web, print and broadcast media.
The challenges today are not only getting great work out the door, on time and on budget, but ensuring the work is compliant from a brand and legal perspective as well. As such, having a system in place that can cater for the full lifecycle of content from creation and collaboration, to creative approvals and the centralization of final artwork, is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but rather a must-have to streamline marketing operations. Especially, when working with tight marketing deadlines and multiple stakeholders.
According to Tessa Court, the CEO of IntelligenceBank DAM, “most companies are undergoing a wave of digital transformation projects whose aim is to create operational efficiencies to reduce cost and risk. For marketing, this means getting brand consistency and quality right across all media to protect brand reputation. Ironically, organizations spend millions to develop and create their brand, but without a brand portal in place, it is essentially impossible to manage in a methodical way.”
What is it? DAM
Digital Asset Management (DAM) is software that provides companies with a centralized online hub to store, manage, find track and share digital assets. A DAM is used to house and order all files including presentations, Microsoft Office documents, agency contracts, design files, images, video and audio. Industry leading DAMs integrate with other systems, such as content management systems and graphic design software, to ensure your DAM is not an island – but the driving force behind your marketing and communications technology. With a constantly increasing number of digital files being created and used in a multi-channel environment, without a DAM, it’s easy to feel perpetually disorganized and lose control of files and brand assets. Trying to keep track of asset licensing, staying on top file versions and managing stakeholder access to assets without a robust system in place is both difficult and costly. Haphazard asset management can lead to a slew of problems which prevent your marketing team from providing inspiring, on-brand marketing.
Try to think about brand compliance and consistency challenges by likening all marketing communications to an iceberg. Brand experience, is more than just the tip of the iceberg (i.e. a company’s most visible communications such as major broadcast campaigns), with the majority of communications activities below the water line. While it’s quite straightforward to ensure high profile creative is on brand and signed off by legal, the key to achieving marketing consistency is ensuring all communications are on-brand and compliant from the campaign planning phase.
For example, a mortgage broker may have a beautifully produced TV campaign promoting their top-rated customer service, however, having overly-complicated legal jargon in formal notices coupled with images that are off brand in a direct mail campaign will negatively impact the company.
Further to the example above, if a freelance creative or a new design agency produces work that makes a false claim or uses an image or video without paying usage rights, the off-brand advertising can attract both adverse social media attention and hefty fines – which are equally bad.
Without using a robust system such as a BrandHub to manage content creation, compliance and distribution, including talent usage rights, legal and creative approvals – it’s only a matter of time before a creative disaster occurs.
Modern marketing departments use online BrandHubs to distribute and produce creative while mitigating marketing compliance risks. While a BrandHub features many of the traditional tools users find in DAM software, some key elements of a BrandHub include the following:
To learn how companies like Medibank, Hertz and NAB use IntelligenceBank’s BrandHub for Brand Compliance, download the IntelligenceBank DAM – Brand Compliance Whitepaper.
By Carolanne Mangles
Carolanne Mangles Dig DipM is the Digital Marketing Executive for Click Travel, an award-winning corporate travel booking platform. She is a specialist in B2B SaaS and enjoys planning and optimizing the full customer journey across all digital channels to create brand awareness, great user experience and copy that really sells the benefits of the product. She was previously Digital Marketing Executive for Smart Insights where she was involved with multiple digital channels to manage fully integrated membership campaigns to boost new customer acquisition and current membership retention. She has spoken and given masterclasses at B2B Expo on Search and Content Marketing, holds an IDM award in GDPR and loves a glass of red wine. Connect with her on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter.
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